Official SmashEurope Spring 2016 Melee Top 20 Ranking: 3rd place

Germany is currently one of the stronger European Smash countries, but this hasn’t always been the case. Despite living in a then fairly inactive region, Ice has been at the forefront of competition since at least 2011, when he had a top 3 finish at the first BEAST behind Armada and Amsah. He was already known as a very driven player before that, traveling from Germany to smashfests in the Netherlands as early as 2008.

Rising to prominence as a Marth main, Ice made the transition to Sheik and then Fox. He has been considered among the best for each of his respective mains, though the competition for top level Fox play is now more steep than ever.

To this day Ice serves as a stark example that you can make it far through sheer effort and a willingness to travel. He is the best German player by a considerable margin and, when it comes to his countrymen, he has only dropped a set against reaper in recent times. Even before he got picked up by mYinsanity in 2015, he could be found at most of the biggest events in both Europe and the US.

Ice had a brief stint as the best European player during Armada’s early 2014 retirement and Leffen’s ban from competing domestically. His overall record against the top 2 is rather bleak however: he has not ever beaten Armada and hasn’t beaten Leffen since September 2014. That said, he remains unchallenged as the #3 on European soil, boasting a recent win over WestBallz and a fair amount of tournament victories in various countries. These achievements also netted him the #17 spot on the 2015 SSBMRank.

When it comes to American performances Ice has often struggled to break into top 8. He recently overcame this at Genesis 3 (January 2016), where he earned himself a respectable 7th place by beating players like Javi, Plup and Colbol. He unfortunately went 0-3 at Battle of the Five Gods, but at the moment of this article’s release he’s in the midst of an impressive Smash Summit 2 run, where he took Mew2King to game 5 and is still in the losers bracket after eliminating PewPewU.

This ranking was a SmashEurope-wide effort spearheaded by Marc, who managed the project and wrote the majority of the player profiles. Additional profiles were written by Rutger and editing was done by Remen. Cas aided in setting up the form and processing the results, while Joeri took care of layout and images. Source photographs used were shot by Seya, Stephanie Lindgren, José Luis Espinosa Parra and Michael Hathaway. We wish to thank the various community leaders who gathered votes and encouraged the panelists and, finally, Tafokints for his input and setting an example with SSBMRank.